Treating Tremors With An Ultrasound

Reported August 2011

BALTIMORE (Ivanhoe Newswire) --Millions of Americans suffer from tremors. Patients with constant shaking can have trouble with some of life’s everyday activities. Things like eating and drinking or holding a pen to write, are almost impossible. Now, learn about a breakthrough procedure that could help some patients get a steady hand.

Now, neurosurgeons are using a new procedure called MRI guided focused ultrasound that stops some types of tremors.

“It involves high resolution MRI scanning as well as ultrasound technology,” Jeff Elias, M.D., neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia Medical Center told Ivanhoe.

Other procedures involve invasive brain surgery, but the new scalpel-free surgery is the first to use ultrasound in the brain to treat tremors.

"We really have to be precise to within a millimeter to stop the tremor,” Dr. Elias said.

The procedure is done in an MRI scanner that allows doctors to aim pulses of harmless ultrasound waves through a patient’s skull to a targeted region within the brain known to be effective for treating some types of tremors. Thousands of ultrasound waves
converge, heating up the area being treated, so that tremor-causing cells die.

“One of the real advantages of this technology is that it allows us the opportunity to test the patient during the treatment,” Dr. Elias explained.

Billy and his doctors watched his tremor get better, and better during treatment. The end result?

“Almost immediately after the procedure my hand was as it is right now,” Williams said.

It’s an immediate fix to help get patient’s back to a steady, normal life.
Magnetic resonance guided focused ultrasound is currently in clinical trials at the University of Virginia Medical Center to treat patients with essential tremor – or ET, a progressive neurologic movement disorder. In the future, researchers plan to investigate the use of MRI guided focused ultrasound to treat other tremor disorders like Parkinson’s, epilepsy and stroke.

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